Building Community Through Poetry

The Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program is dedicated to building community through poetry by appointing and supporting an outstanding local poet as Poet Laureate for the city, sponsoring events that feature area poets and authors from outside the New Hampshire Seacoast, and encouraging a love of poetry among people of all ages.

Established in 1997 by local arts organizers and writers, the program brings people together to celebrate the written word and the talents of local and visiting artists.

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Current Poet Laureate – Diannely Antigua

Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. Her debut collection Ugly Music was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award. She received her BA in English from the University of Massachusetts Lowell where she won the Jack Kerouac Creative Writing Scholarship; and received her MFA at NYU where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to Florence, Italy. She is the recipient of additional fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program, and was a finalist for the 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and chosen for the Best of the Net Anthology. She lives in Portsmouth and has been a fixture at all the readings in town where she has shown again and again that not only is she a great poet, but she also has an amazingly warm, friendly, and enthusiastic personality. And all of these qualities are the makings of a great poet laureate. We are so grateful that she has accepted her nomination for this post. We cannot wait to get to work with her on her projects and continue this twenty five year old tradition with the PPLP of building community with poetry in Portsmouth and beyond.

Learn more about Diannely

Featured Poem

Father Son and Holy Ghost

BY AUDRE LORDE

I have not ever seen my father’s grave.

Not that his judgment eyes

have been forgotten

nor his great hands’ print

on our evening doorknobs

one half turn each night

and he would come

drabbled with the world’s business

massive and silent

as the whole day’s wish

ready to redefine

each of our shapes

but now the evening doorknobs

wait and do not recognize us

as we pass.

Each week a different woman

regular as his one quick glass

each evening

pulls up the grass his stillness grows

calling it weed.

Each week a different woman

has my mother’s face

and he

who time has changeless

must be amazed

who knew and loved

but one.

My father died in silence

loving creation

and well-defined response

he lived still judgments

on familiar things

and died knowing

a January 15th that year me.

Lest I go into dust

I have not ever seen my father’s grave.

More Poems from the Hoot

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Esther Buffler Residency

In 2002, friends and family of Esther Buffler, our first Poet Laureate, set up a memorial fund that will enable the Poet Laureate Program to arrange an annual residency for a poet-in-residence in the Portsmouth School Department.

Following her death, a residency was endowed to allow a selected to poet to spend part of a week (compensated) in the Portsmouth Public School system.